Fluxbooks

“Having dispensed with their official role and elitist nature, Fluxus books occupied an entirely clandestine position, shirking conventional forms—not only in terms of their conception, creation, distribution and proposal—breaking all commercial ties and assuming the role of an instrument of struggle to make an impact, in their own way, on the dichotomy between life and art. This allowed artists to enjoy full autonomy in the production of their works and to become their own publishers, as well as to make use of new printing processes, often at a low cost, for broader distribution (stencils, photocopies, offset).
Books replaced museums, art galleries and theaters, and thus had to contain not only their usual informative capacities, but also the intermedial potential of artistic practice. They became events as well as containers of thoughts and images, and the physical presence of artistic objects. The traditional structure of the book object was found increasingly inadequate to contain all this, so it was transformed into a boîte, container, binder or box. [...]
This is not intended to be an account of the Fluxbook's history, as in any case the very nature of Fluxus as something fluid and uninterrupted makes it difficult to document historically. This first detailed study of the artist's book within the Fluxus movement presents its aesthetic research as one of the most productive and irreverent transformations of the book medium. Hence, there was no need for comments by critics, which are not relevant to this study. The few explanatory notes below and, more than anything else, the images of the books themselves, are sufficient to present their nature and development.”